


The Children of Mjördin

by ruarkvallen



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, GAIMAN Neil - Works, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, young adult - Fandom
Genre: Adventure, Children, Family, Fantasy, Friendship, Heroes, Multi, Mystery, Secrets, Time Travel, battles, duels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-08-22 14:13:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16599428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruarkvallen/pseuds/ruarkvallen
Summary: Nikola, a rebel living in the year 2230, upon dying, suddenly finds himself in the year 724. But the past he’s in feels off, and Nikola starts to form doubts as to where he truly is. Together with Sky, a 12 year old boy who had found him, they are plunged into the mysteries of the world, as they unravel the lies that blind the globe and the secrets behind the Children, the Children of Mjördin.





	1. The Bow and Arrow

**Author's Note:**

> This work has been loosely inspired by Neil Gaiman's work "A Study in Emerald", which was also inspired by HP Lovecraft, the Sherlock Holmes part though i'll not try to incorporate :). I'm also influenced by The Lord of the Rings and am trying to get the easy to read feel of the work.

Prologue  
Year 2230

The sun was setting and he was falling. The concrete would meet him in 20 seconds, yet time stood still. The cityscape, its ruins of high rises bathing in hues of orange and yellow grandeur, casted shadows throughout the view. And the sky was the city and the heavens was under his feet.

It took them so long to climb up the 60-story building, and it takes just 20 seconds to go down. Hours of sweat and blood, along with nine lives, and right now, his was the tenth. 

Ten courageous people to draw all the demons’s attentions, so that the others could run away through the exit in the basement floors. Their group were just one among the many, around the world others had the same idea: to hide all the information they can keep safe, and access them once they are capable of using them again.

The old ones came and conquered and the whole of Mjördin fought a losing battle. The world, taken by surprise had been swallowed in a single night. No prophecies to warn them, no premonitions to prepare them for what had come. And the world, Mjördin was plunged in decay and destruction.

Twenty seconds is too short a fall; he would have wanted to reminisce more in the cradle of the rushing wind, where calmness gently washed over him. He knew Yura and the others are okay, they made sure all the demons followed their “suicide” group. Death was inevitable they knew it, but they had hope, that somehow there might be a way. Hope enough to give them courage to volunteer. 

“I will see you at the base! There will be noodles waiting, okay?” Yura had called to him. 

He had held back tears as she turned and left with no goodbyes. Maybe this was less painful. But it pained him a lot nonetheless. The next things passed in a blur of gunshots, screams and adrenaline.

And here he was, the last of the ten, calm and feeling fulfilled. They had kept them all occupied for hours; none had gone astray to follow the others. Though it bothered him slightly, there was a bright light before he fell. It must have been what threw him off the building. He lets go of the thought and looked at the ruined city upside down.

This will be the last he’ll look at the ruins of this great cityscape. He savored it as time started to move again. Eyes closed, he welcomed the long rest waiting for him down below.

 

 

Chapter 1 - The Bow and Arrow  
Year 724

Sky has no idea how his life will change greatly in the coming days by the events in store for him today.

The 12-year-old boy lies prone under a thick bush. His eyes are fixed at a small mound a few meters away, waiting for any sign of movement. Unmoving and with a steady breath, he waits in silence. It’s an hour past mid-day and the sun burns the ground in a sweltering heat. Though under the shade, his dark disheveled hair sticks on his forehead from the trickling sweat.

He had followed a grobbit into the bushes after chancing upon it a few ways off their cabbage field. It had destroyed one of their cabbages that would have been ready for harvest in a few days. Not that he had followed it for vengeance, but had only wanted to try out his brand new bow and fortunately chanced on a more or less acceptable reason to use it (unfortunately for the grobbit).

After chasing it away, scrambling and crawling on the grass and fallen leaves, he had found a hidden burrow at the spot where the last speck of its brown fluffy tail disappeared, right underneath the bushes. But all for nought, for he’s been settled on the ground for quite some time and there is still no sign of movement. His elbows had started to cramp slightly a few minutes back, and his shoulders and back feels a bit stiff.

“Why hasn’t it come out yet?” With a furrowed brow and puffed up cheeks he stares at the burrow one last time.

“I should start with something bigger or slower, easy to hit and doesn’t burrow themselves into tiny holes”. Sky gives a big sigh and blows the leaves on the ground in front of him.

Weak leaves flew off and fell to the ground as Sky scrambles out the bush, and forces his whole body against the clinging branches. He frees himself promptly, stretches his arms up wide, and takes a big gulp of air.

“I wonder where I should go next!” His eyes brim with excitement and a wide smile fills his face as he exhales a lungful of air.

“There should be more targets further in the forest, though I wouldn’t want to come across a feral hog again, maybe something less aggressive.”

He cracks a sound from a few stiffened joints in his hands, neck and shoulders, and proceeds with a few more stretching exercises. He needs his body fit and warmed up for his hunt.

Upon realizing something feels missing, he looks back at his hiding place to find his brand new bow tangled in the twigs; his makeshift arrow planted in the ground from where it fell head first. He grasps the bow at one end and gives it a tug, but it fails to come out. This time with both hands, he gives it a big pull and the bow is instantly pulled out from the entanglement, along with a sharp twang and a stinging pain across his cheek.

“Grrr, that hurts.” He inhales a long breath and quietly absorbs the pain. His hand rubbing his stinging cheek. “Fortunately it didn’t hit an eye. Though, it would have been cool to wear an eyepatch.“ He chuckles and continues to rub his cheek as he picks up the arrow sticking in the ground. He promptly sits on the grass and begins to fix his bow with an extra string he carries in his pocket. In a few minutes, the bow is fixed and Sky brandishes it in front of him like a sword, his eyes sparkling as he grins in anticipation for his adventure up ahead.

Sky decides to head west, away from their village. The bushes starts to get denser as Sky moves further in. This part is still a familiar area for him, as further ahead is the woodcutter’s cabin, where most of their village’s firewood comes from.

While walking, he remembers his dog. Sky starts to miss Pooch. Pooch is his usual companion during his explorations, a mongrel with a long red-brown mane, and a fluffy long white tail that’s always raised high in the air. Pooch had been injured a few days back while playing with Sky, and is currently recuperating in their house.

During Pooch’s accident, that was the first time Sky saw a bow and arrow in action, and it fascinated him a lot. Inspiring him to make his own. Sky thinks about Pooch's accident as he walks.

A few days ago, Sky had been playing catch with Pooch near the forest, when a young grobbit caught their eye. It peeped out warily on top of the low grass, it’s hairless body standing out in the lush green grass. Like all grobbits, it had no ears. Pooch ran after it in a heartbeat. This sudden attack surprised the young grobbit, and with it’s bouncing white fluffy tail, it ran past its burrow and was chased off by the dog deeper into the forest. On their heels, Sky followed suit, calling for Pooch to come back, but his cries fell on deaf ears.

In its frantic run, the young grobbit led them into an unknown part of the forest. Sky had never ventured this far in, and the trees and plants looked darker and older, no grobbits lived here. The grobbit is surely lost by now and would never be able to return, yet Pooch continued to hound after it, barking and with his tongue lolling as it sped. He had to get Pooch to stop chasing or they will soon be lost too. 

When Sky saw the grobbit and Pooch running straight towards a large bush, he ran even harder. It seemed both of them had no plan to stop. It would be bad if Pooch got out of his sight, either of them could get lost trying to find each other this deep in the forest. His fear didn’t pass when both the grobbit and the dog shortly disappeared into the foliage. Sky had no time to loose, and rammed himself into the bush. As soon as he entered the leaves and twigs, he heard Pooch’s barks of pain and his heart skipped a beat. He forced his way through blindly, and in a second he was out.

He stepped on thin air.

When there should have been more ground, there was only air. And Sky had a split second of confusion as he fell down, his stomach lurching with the sudden fall. He hit the ground shortly and was only lucky to avoid a broken ankle as he stumbled headlong on his descent. The forest became a blur of grey and green as he rolled down a steep slope.

Recovering his wits in a second, he quickly shifted his weight to stop the roll, yet he was still sliding with the gathered speed. But he could see better now, and promptly grabbed some shrubs and anything to slow himself down, breaking them and pulling them off their roots until finally, with both hands, he grabbed a young trunk and his slide ended.

Dazed, panting and bruised, he surveyed the scene below, and saw Pooch lying on the ground. He had curled up and was looking around, finally locating Sky on the slope and wagging its tail. The young grobbit was nowhere to be found. Sky then checked the slope to see how he’ll be able to go down safely and discovered spots where he can break his momentum every few steps. Slow and sure, he began his decent, moving a few steps to the right and settling on a stump, then moving to the left a few steps to settle on a protruded rock. He repeated this exercise all the way down. Looking at Pooch, it had stayed on the forest floor for a while now, it seemed it won’t be able to walk out of this forest by itself. Sky will have to carry it on his back and this steep slope was no longer an option for their way out.

“Hang in there Pooch! You’ll be okay! I’m on my way!” Pooch looked up at him and excitedly wagged his tail, his whole body moving in the motion.

Regularly looking down at Pooch, he pressed on his way below. A rustle in the tall grass a few distance from Pooch caught Sky’s attention. From the leaves, something came out, small, fat and blackish, its small tusk brightly white against its dark skin. It was a feral piglet. This wasn’t a good sign. He increased his pace. If there were piglets, there was bound to be a feral hog nearby and these hogs would protect their babies at all cost. He wasn’t confident enough to protect Pooch from a feral hog if worse had come to worst. These feral hogs are known to gouge grown men easily with their terrifying tusks and no amount of hurting it could stop its attack until it’s satisfied or fatally maimed into submission.

Pooch please don’t do anything stupid Sky thought, his heart beating faster. The dog had been licking its foot when the feral piglet jumped out of the bushes, but it had caught Pooch’s attention now. Both stared at each other in silence, not one of them moving for a few seconds. From among the tall grass, out popped two more feral piglets, rustling the leaves as they appeared. Things had started to look dire. Sky increased his pace even more as Pooch was now staring at three feral piglets, all four of them frozen in place.

Pooch, please don’t bark at them. Don’t you dare even think of it--

Pooch barked.

In a moment, a huge rustling came from the tall grass. A feral hog was coming.


	2. The Hunter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nikola, a rebel living in the year 2230, upon dying, suddenly finds himself in the year 724. But the past he’s in feels off, and Nikola starts to form doubts as to where he truly is. Together with Sky, a 12 year old boy who had found him, they are plunged into the mysteries of the world, as they unravel the lies that blind the globe and the secrets behind the Children, the Children of Mjördin.

Loud barks echoed through the woods. Pooch was giving it his all, totally uncalled for. The three little piglets didn’t frighten the dog, compared to them he was like a wolf ready to devour them if they came close.

Pooch barked some more, even louder and intimidating.

“You crazy dog! You always drag me into trouble!” Sky shouted. 

Grunting and shrieking, ready to protect its young, a huge feral hog jumped out from behind the tall grass. Pooch was dwarfed like a cat against a lion in comparison. Sky estimated it would be around four to five times his size. There was no chance he could even scare it away on flat ground. 

Loud barks became whimpers as soon as the huge feral hog began to charge.

Things went dire, but Sky came up with an idea and it might just work out. He could get out of it with just some bruises or the worst a broken bone.

Speeding up his pace, Sky let the momentum gather with his descent.

The feral hog was fast approaching, yet Pooch was in no condition to move away. It had already crouched its head low in the ground, surrendered. Sky hoped he could make it in time.

His descent had become perilous but he was lucky enough to time it well with the feral hog’s approach. In the few seconds that elapsed, the hog had come dangerously close to Pooch. At the last instant, Sky saw it, a good foothold. He aimed his foot to land on it, and used the downward velocity to charge his spring, launching himself far off into the air. Kicking the hog at this rate would no doubt result to a broken bone, and he knew it. So, he extended his legs and aimed.

“Get off my dog you brute!” Sky raged as he landed his feet squarely into the feral hog’s forehead.

He bent his knee to absorb the impact, then used his velocity and gravity to add power to his push. With the sudden weight, hog’s head was forced to crash into the soil, splashing dirt into Pooch. Sky slid sideways and rolled on the ground to cushion his fall, the hog had fallen sideways from the blow. It wasn’t enough to scare it away, but he had succeeded in getting its attention. Dazed, it turned towards him, muzzle covered in dirt, bleeding. Sky had no time to lose, he sprang into a charge right after his roll, and balled his fist for a heavy punch. As the hog was still reeling, he aimed for another blow at its head. He gathered all his might into his arm and hit the hog’s temple with a charging punch. 

The hog reeled once more from the second attack. It started to move backward, hesitated, then decided to run away into the forest afterwards, its piglets running after it. Exhausted from the ordeal, Sky fell on the ground to sit. He was glad. A sly smile broke from his face, clearly pleased with himself. His master would have been proud of him if he saw this.

“You okay there, Pooch? Let’s get out of here as soon as possible.” 

Sky approached the curled-up dog, dirt all over its fur from the feral hog’s dirt shower.

Pure delight filled Pooch to see Sky down here with him. He wagged his tail again, ears pulled back, whole body moving excitedly, and tongue lolling and licking its nose and muzzle rapidly. As soon as Sky bent over Pooch, it made a sharp sound between and shrill scream and a yawn, and barked in eagerness and gratitude to his saviour.

“Boy you’re heavier than before. I won’t be able to carry you for too long.” 

Pooch was neatly settled in his arms. With no first aid knowledge for Pooch’s injuries, Sky thought he needed to get his dog out of here as fast as possible. It was fortunate that it looked like he could still carry Pooch without it hurting a lot. Pooched kept silent in his arms.

Sky looked up at the top of the slope and traced it to the left then to the right, the better to judge which direction he should proceed. Tracing the top of the hill to the left, it continued as a steep slope and ended into a rocky cliff wall, this way was out of the option. While to the right side, it proceeded into more slopes and disappears behind a bend. There could be a way out behind it. Without further delay, Sky hastened towards the slope’s bend.

Sky had time to observe this part of the forest during his brisk walk. He had never been this deep in the forest, his parents had warned him not to go too far past the woodcutters cabin. There were all sorts of animals in the forest they did not know of, and the most notorious of these, known to go near man’s habitation, were the feral hogs. These hogs were well known because they are commonly seen, but there were more dangerous animals deeper in, living far from men. And it was bad to wander into their territories. Sky thought about it as he made his way towards the bend.

The sun was still high up in the sky, partly hidden by the forest canopy, its rays illuminated the forest floor in big pillars of light. As Sky walked, he was pulled from his thoughts by a rustling in the bushes from behind. It was faint, and it sounded far. But faint and far was alarming, because it meant the source wasn’t faint at all. Suddenly, as if carried by the wind, he heard the snorts and squeals like a great many pigs approaching. Sky panicked and he hastened his steps. As the sounds grew gradually louder, he broke into a run.

“Forgive me Pooch, you will need to endure some discomfort from here on. We’ll get out of here soon I promise.” 

As Sky looked at Pooch while he ran, balled in his arms, teary eyed in silence, ears pulled back. It wagged its tail for a few seconds.

From behind him appeared a multitude of huge feral pigs, spread out, trampling plants along the way. There was no time to count them for he had to focus on running for their lives. He could hear their grunts and heavy breathing as they charged. In the middle of them was the feral hog he had hit on the head twice. It was the largest of the drove, its leader and all looked ready to kill.

Sky ran with all his might, jumping over protruding roots, trampling small shrubs and breaking twigs on the ground. The drove of feral pigs were getting closer behind them and it looked like they were even gaining speed. No, Sky’s muscles were getting tired and Pooch wasn’t getting any lighter. The situation looked hopeless, their gap getting shorter and shorter.

As he glanced at the drove behind, something zipped past him from the front. Five arrows hit five feral pigs and all five instantly dropped from the charge. He immediately looked forward but could not see anyone in front in a glimpse, his attention was consumed with taking care of where he was stepping on as there were all sorts of holes , gaps, and overgrown roots on the ground. A broken ankle waits for a careless step.

One more glance over his shoulder and he saw the remaining feral pigs continued to gain distance. They looked a lot lesser than before, he still could not give an exact count however. During this glance, a few more arrows zipped past him towards the hogs. All arrows hit their mark on each feral pigs, promptly dropping their charge and sending them off in squeals of pain.

Something seemed off but Sky held off the thought for he no longer heard any sounds of pigs charging behind him. He stopped in his tracks and looked around. Upon confirming there were no longer threats, he carefully laid Pooch on the ground to rest his arms. He stood and looked around to find the ones who helped him, and he sees someone approaching.

He had not seen the man before, he held a long bow and a quiver full of arrows on his back. He did not have much with him, just a rucksack on his right shoulder. He had short dark hair and a short beard, looking just about in the middle of his adulthood. He must have already been on the road for quite sometime for he looked ragged and dusty, but his walk was confident, relaxed and he had an easy air around him. 

“Are you okay?” The man asked.

“Thank you for helping us! I’m okay, but my dog’s injured.” Sky answered, he was still worried for Pooch.

“I can take a look at your dog if you’d like. Let me see how I can help.”

“Yay! That would be great!” Sky was excited, “We still have a long way to go out of this forest!”

The man lowers himself besides Pooch who was silently watching. After petting Pooch, the man proceeded to inspect the dog for injuries. He found the injuries in both left front and hind legs. Sky helped by holding down Pooch as he applied a decent treatment on them.

“My name is Sky, and this Pooch.”

“And mine is Leon. What were you doing out here in the woods? It’s dangerous to be out here alone.”

“It’s a long story, we’re trying to find our way out. Do you know it?”

“I do, I’ll guide you near the exit.”

“Yey!”

All the while, Sky had been having a nagging thought since the man appeared. The feral pigs were known to be ferocious creatures of the forest and they would attack a target no matter what and it would take a great deal of damage and pain before they could be turned away. But the pigs clearly ran away with just one hit.

“Are your arrows special? Simple attacks can’t stop charging feral hogs in their tracks.”

“They’re normal arrows, but I use dark energy to infuse my arrows with. Do you know it?”

“Yes I do, the children in the village are able to use it just a bit.”

“Yes, you should have one too. Come here and let me take a look at you.”

Leon held Sky’s hand and looked for a sign of the dark energy. But he couldn’t get a trace of it. He then moved his hand towards his forehead, where dark energies supposedly leaked most. And there was none as well. He was quite surprised. Sky could see the look of surprise and confusion on Leon’s eyes.

“I don’t have it. My dad didn’t have it either when they were born, but he learned it later when they were taught about it. Maybe I’m just like my father so I don’t worry about it that much.”

“I see. That’s interesting, but all the kids in your village knows how to use it except you?”

“Uhm yeah I guess. They’ve been taught how.”

“And you weren’t?”

“Uhm, I was too.”

“And?”

“And… I don’t know how to use it. Even after being taught.”

“I see that is interesting.”

“Hey Mr. Leon, can you teach me how to use your bow?” Sky saw Leon smiled from Sky’s sudden change of topic. Sky was unperturbed by his lack of knowhow to use dark energy, he had quite adapted already from the lack of it. The other kids in the village already knew about it since they were 7. Before, he felt very frustrated about it, but he soon found out that he can still learn it later, and thus focused on training his body beforehand. His master had been a great help.

“So, can you teach me how to use your bow?”

Leon laughed and stopped walking. He handed the bow over to Sky. The bow was so long and taller than him. There was no way he could use it, he’d need a smaller one. Sky pouted.

“As you can see, you can’t use this one, maybe i’ll teach you someday when you have your own bow. If we see each other again.”

“I hope to see you again then.”

“For the meantime, let me show you how i use it”.

The man took an arrow out of his quiver, then pulled the bow string with it. Aiming for just a fraction of a second, he released, causing the arrow to hit a nearby tree. Sky was clearly amazed and excited, he couldn’t wait to have his own bow and learn how to use it. He decided he’ll make his own bow and arrow.

A few days later, Sky hunts for his first prey with his brand-new weapon.


	3. The Clearing

Upon fixing his bow, Sky is on his way to find a new hunting ground. He would tell Pooch all about his adventure later when he gets back home. He decided to head past the woodcutters’ cabin. From there, he’ll be able to go deep in the forest, and yet still be safe. The area around the woodcutters’ cabin were already mapped and explored, he should only be careful not to stray too far.

There is a well-trodden path towards the cabin, the ground had already eroded away from all the wood cutters passing through here for the last 50 years. The trees aren’t too dense in this along the path, and there were young trees growing on the sides. These young trees had been planted by the woodcutters. Their lack fo strenght to venture far out into the woods, provided the idea to plant trees nearby. The cabin here is one of the village’s wood cutters areas. There are four in all located around the village.

Currently, one of the cabins in the north is being used this year, and will continue to be used for the next 5 years. It only takes 7 years for a tree to grow fully matured, thus the forests easily get out of hand if not kept in check. The old folks tell of tales when trees back then matured longer, and some would take 20-30 years. But these are just old men tales now, the reality is that trees grow a lot in a few years and some forests even outgrow small villages that it became more dangerous for them to live there every year.

Sky reaches the cabin, the work area in front of it is devoid of activity, and no freshly cut logs piled in triangular heaps can be seen. Old man Gamgee is the only one staying here at this time and Sky sees him on the porch of the two-story log cabin, sleeping with a hat over his head. There is nothing to guard here for Old man Gamgee, it’s just that he likes the forest, away from all the noise and distractions of the village’s daily bustle. Sky had little interaction with the old man as he was growing up. They were more like acquaintances at the moment, as Old man Gamgee is rarely seen in the village. Old man Gamgee, there is a nice ring to it, and Sky wonders why and when people started calling him that. He is old indeed, but the Old man stuck like a first name to his surname, and Sky isn’t even sure if Gamgee is the first name or the last.

Sky continues to walk past the cabin. Though the cabin is quiet now, the clamor from the wood cutters’s activities had driven most of the animals away from the vicinity. It would be lucky if Sky can even find a good game not high up in the trees, there will be squirrels but they will surely be out of his range; same with the birds who are happily singing above him as he walks. 

As Sky was thinking these, a squirrel comes running up a tree, nimble and swift, and settles on a branch before disappearing into a hollow in the trunk. They seldom encounter these squirrels in the village, they have long beaks, sharp teeth, two teeth longer than the others at their upper jaw. They are like rats on trees except for their fluffy tails. Sky fancies calling them Teerats, short for treerats. He would try to convince the village to call it that when he returns home. Few people bother going out in the wild and even take the time to name these wild animals. And there are more animals they don’t know just beyond these trees.

Sky finally enters a clearing some distance beyond the cabin. Quite a beautiful scene, short green grass basking under the sun all throughout the clearing with sprinkles of tiny flowers, yellow, red, and white, here and there. There is a structure in the middle overgrown with vines and ferns. It is a flight of steps shaped in a quarter of a circle and ends on a platform with a broken archway where once should have stood a big door. He had been here a few times, there are structures like these that can be found all around their region, remnants of towns and cities eroded by time. They have no idea who once lived here. For the past hundreds of years no one lived in these areas, and their ancestors, like the founders of their village, came from the Hasturian Kingdom thousands of miles away. Sky knows these well, stories he hears from the elders. The thought of a bigger world outside their village fascinates him.

Behind these ancient structures, Sky sees his new targets. There are three dreers. These are huge versions of grobbits but with longer legs and no tail. These are young ones grazing in the distance, bout half a meter in height and can grow up to 2 meters. The young ones tend to go near the cabin, but the mature ones keep themselves deep in the forest, where they stay undisturbed for years and grow monstrous horns on their head. They had such elder dreer horns displayed in the village hall.

Sky aims to scare the dreers away. He quietly approaches the fern covered stairs at the center of the clearing. He walks low, careful not to be seen, and soon stoops to a crawl once he reaches them. Preparing the arrow in the bow, he judges he can shoot the dreers at this distance.

He raises himself up in a swift motion, half kneeling, and shoots the arrow towards the dreers. But to his surprise, he sees the arrow drop like a rock a few feet into the grass! It’s a flop shot. He is able to scare away the dreers though, as he soon sees them running into the trees beyond the clearing.

“What!?” 

Sky looks at this bow and finds it broken once more, though with a careful inspection, he sees the string only loosen. Immediately after fixing it, he jumps off the top of the stairs to pick up the fallen arrow. The dreers can still be near, thus Sky hastens to follow them into the trees.

He had succeeded in scaring them away, but he feels no satisfaction in the result. Running, he crosses the clearing with wide steps. Then shortly hides behind a tree to look ahead. No sign of dreers, but he sees their tracks on the soft earth.

“Oh this is interesting! I can follow where they went through this! Wow!” 

Sky exclaims at the sudden realization. He is fired up with the new knowledge. With the nimbleness of a cat, he leaves his position and follows the tracks deeper into the trees.

“Here they are! I won’t fail this time!”

He finds them grazing by a stream. With no hesitation, he shoots an arrow at them once more. But they are too far and the arrow lands halfway. Annoyed, Sky sneaks forward to fetch the arrow. The dreers are still there, and Sky approaches slowly.

Sky is once more in an unknown part of the forest. He knows this will be his last shot and shouldn’t pursue them after this. Moving forward would only increase his chances of getting lost.

Sky aims carefully at the dreer. He had never shot from this distance before, this is a lot farther than his point-blank practice shots with the potato sacks in their backyard. He doesn’t want his shot to fall halfway again either, so he pulls the bow back fully. Does he really want to hit the dreer this time? No, he doesn’t want to, he wants to scare it away. Maybe just shoot a tree stump right beside it, but he worries it might hit the dreer instead of the stump. He decides to try and hit a tree trunk a few distances away, hoping it might create a sound. 

He releases the string. Eyes wide, Sky stares at the arrow, enjoying the moment of its flight. he follows it towards the trunk and it looks like it is going hit. Whoosh. Past the trunk it goes and over the stream. He has overdrawn the bow and the arrow went farther than he expected. A second later, a huge cry of pain comes from behind the foliage. Someone has been hit!

“Hey!! What the heck!!”

Sky stood astonished on the spot.

\---

In the middle of the forest, lies a carcass of a huge dead animal. Its body is 2 meters high as it lays on the ground, arrows pierce both of its eyes. A huge gash appears on its stomach, its guts spills in red and black. It looks like a giant horned lizard which stands on its hind legs, if it was still alive. Its long arms seem too weak to be a part of walking and its long black claws shine in the small sunlight passing through the cover of the millions of leaves up above. Atop this carcass sits a man.

“I name thee, Deathclaw, for if anyone else sees you, they will undoubtedly die. None of the people in this region can survive an encounter with you. It is quite unfortunate that we met. Although I doubt anyone will even trouble to go where you are.” The man points his bloodied sword at the animal’s head as he said this.

The forest looks old, all around it hangs aged vines and huge ferns fill the wide trunks of ancient trees. Nearby is forest bog, filled with dark waters, peat, and tall evergreens wrapped with moss. The animal had been hunting for prey in the bog when, unfortunately, it came across the man, who’s now calmly cleaning his sword on top of the animal. This man is Leon.

It has been 3 days since he saw the kid with the injured dog. He had showed him how to use a bow and he wonders how he was doing now.

The kid piqued his interest back then. He was quite unusual in a way. He saw the kid from afar as he stumbled down the slope trying to reach his injured dog. With no intention to help him, he was only passing by but decided to watch. The kid was able to smash the feral hog into the ground and spontaneously punch it in the forehead, sending it reeling and running away. That part was unbelievable. He had spent months in this region and been fatally defeated by a feral hog on their first encounter. No punch, no stab, no arrow in the eye could stop its onslaught once it started. There was no easy way to do it besides using Hastur’s energy, the dark energy that engulfs the Hasturian kingdom. And a huge amount is needed to be able to affect the animals. Leon could not believe it, and decided to stay and find out more about the kid.

He saved them when all hope was lost for the kid. The kid would have died if he hadn’t interfered. If he was the kid he wouldn’t have survived as well. The mystery will never be solved if the kid died. He managed to save them, but alas, the more he got confused.

People has a small vessel of dark energy in their body and some can train them to become bigger, but only to some extent. The people in this region has small vessels except for the direct immigrants from the center of the kingdom. He estimated that the kid’s vessel equalled his own, and if it was the case he may have had to kill him or torture him to find the answers that he had been looking for, for so long, the only reason why he wanders this forest at all. From his point of view, the kid would become dangerous if he grew up. With that in mind, he tested the kid’s vessel and found there was none or too small to even notice, same as most of the people in this region. It was confusing and it confuses him still. For the meantime, he concludes that the kid might have just been very lucky that day. Thus, he let these thoughts slip from his mind.


	4. The Colossal Tree

The sun sets hidden behind the trees, turning the inside of the forest closer to pitch black. On this darkening forest floor, Nikola lies flat on his back, asleep. 

Hours later, he jolts awake in the freezing cold, the ground beneath him damp, and wet the fabric of his clothes.

“Where am I?” He sits up. His teeth chatter in the cold, and he starts to rub his shoulders with his hands. He realizes that his body aches all over. 

“I’m supposed to be dead, what am I doing here? What is this place? “

He tries looking around but could not see anything in the pitch-black darkness. Thus he gropes around and grabs dried leaves and earth.

He hears a wild screech of an animal and it sounds too close. The rustling of leaves, the movements in a bush, a breaking twig, everything sounds so near. Nikolai starts hearing his heartbeat and he hears his blood pumping in his veins. The silence is profound and his hearing has finished adjusting.

He becomes aware, the forest teeming with life, and the rising realization sinks in.

“I am alive… I’m alive!! I really am alive. I’m in a forest. How did I get here? I fell down a building. And now I’m here! And it’s freezing!! I’m going to freeze to death at this rate.” 

Survival instincts kicks in and he gropes in the dark once more, trying to grab whatever he can. It will be foolish to move around in the extreme darkness to look for shelter, so next best thing, he thought, is to make do with anything nearby. He grabs leaves, grass, pine needles, and anything soft. He keeps groping for more, and collects a few. 

“This won’t do, it won’t be able to cover my whole body. It would be great if I can crawl under a mound of leaves.”

He grabs a few more, widening his reach, and decides to change tactics. He begins stuffing all the leaves into his clothes, his pants and stuff them all around his body. It is fortunate that he is wearing a long sleeved tshirt.

“Next, I need to find a corner to sleep in. I can’t stay out here in the open. Beside a tree will do.” 

He crawls away from his location, while grabbing leaves and pine needles along the way, aiming to bump into a tree. He finally reached something solid, it was big and it felt like a fallen log. He cozies himself beside it, laying himself as close to the log as possible. He has enough leaves in his body now to heat himself up a bit. He gathers a few more dried leaves to cover his head. His uncontrollable chatters have disappeared and he is somewhat feeling warmer. He begins to doze off to sleep… 

He wakes up at around mid-day, the sun shining through the trees in a slant. His body aches once more as he opens his eyes. He hears the birds and creatures screeching around him. 

“I’m so thirsty…”

He turns to look at the fallen log which helped his sleep last night.

“What the hell?! This isn’t a log!”

The log turns out to be the tip of a huge root above the ground and it winds up towards a colossal tree.

“And what the hell is with that tree! I’ve never seen anything like it.”

He looks up the tree and traces its moss and fern covered trunk up into the thick of leaves. It leans at an angle giving it a look of an easy climb, the rest are hidden behind the leaves and branches as huge as tree trunks high above.

“This could be the highest, largest tree for miles around,” thought Nikola.  
“It may be a good vantage point if i can climb up to its peak. I’ll give it a try. No use wandering around just to get lost deeper into this forest, wherever this is.”

His throat a bit parched from thirst, Nikola builds his resolve to climb the gigantic tree. It towers above the rest of the trees around it, and the roots spread everywhere creates a wide clearing free of trees under its branches. Huge vines, dark and old hang on every branch.

Nikola begins his hike up across the roots towards the leaning massive trunk. It’s more like a trek at this point and not a climb. He can hear a lot of animals in the forest and it was strange that he hasn’t seen one yet. The noisiest are the birds, with a few howls and screeches here and there.

A few minutes later, Nikola reaches the main trunk. The roots creeps up and gnarls itself around the tree trunk from this point. It creates places to step on and spots to grab on the way up. Even though the climb has become steep, he continues climbing with ease. There are ferns growing in the holes of the trunk, huge branches like as wide as roads shoot out from the trunk filled, hanging vines and lots of leaves at their ends, and the sounds of birds hidden in the leaves could be heard, all these, he passes by. The trunk itself is filled with wide patches of moss, the wood beneath him tinged dark gray. He sees the ground far below. He has already climbed as high as the mid top of the trees surrounding the massive trunk. A few more minutes and he’ll be able to see above the canopy and welcome the full sunlight on top of the trees. 

“Hmmm this seems like a dead end from here. I guess it’s time to climb for real.” 

Nikolai looks around for good hand and foot holds. He’s not a wall climber, and his only experience with climbing trees were from when he was little. But he trusts on what he knows, a good foot hold, and a good hand hold. Don’t slide, don’t look down. 

A few minutes later…

“It looked a lot easier in my head. Ugh.” 

This high up, he can feel the wind blowing, his clothes damp with sweat flaps in the wind. At the periphery of his vision, he can tell he’s above the canopy at this point. He doesn’t want to look around just yet, he needs to get to a level ground and rest. 

The climb isn’t too hard and Nikolai reaches a landing after a while. It is like half a tunnel carved in the surface of the trunk, the floor is a single thick root-like growth that wraps itself around the colossal tree. Looking around, the half tunnel continues on either way around the trunk, slightly inclined upward on one and downward on the other.

“I doubt I’ll be able to go down this way again. Sigh…”

He sits on the surface, his hands supporting his upper body as he leans back a little, observing the canopy stretched in front of him. There are mountains in the distance, nothing but trees on this side. Nikolai was sure it was mid-day when he woke up, he expected to see the sun high in the sky by the time he reaches the canopy, marking noon, knowing he won’t be able to know which direction he was facing for an hour. He was surprised to see the sun not where it was supposed to be.

“Oh no… This is bad, it was already past noon when I woke up. It’ll be dusk by the time i get down!” 

He stands up and decides to see how far this half tunnel goes. He was facing south when he was seated, and the sun was to his left. 

“I’m walking east.” Nikolai reminds himself, getting his bearings clear. “Halfway around the trunk from where I sat would be north, so a quarter will be pointing straight east”

Nikolai continues walking around, there is a rise in altitude as he moves forward. His heart skips a bit at what he saw at the top of the rise, straight facing east. 

“Yes!! Trees, trees, trees, tress and finally a plain! And a few mountains farther away. The plain is quite far, but if I should just continue going east, I’ll be out of this forest before I know it. Hmmm there are few smokes rising at the edge of this forest, it’s quite small, but those are definitely smoke here and there. There must be a town beyond those trees. I may be able to survive a day more without water… but food, I hope i find something along the way, fruits or berries, hopefully nothing poisonous.” 

He stands still, it’s still a few hours before sunset, Nikola estimates it’s at least 3pm. 

“Now how do i get down from here… There was a lot of winding around the tree on the way up, I may lose my bearing on the way down. Hmmm.”

He looks around, at this altitude, some the road-wide branches can be seen below. As he sees the vines hanging here and there, he is struck by an idea.

“Maybe I’ll try rappelling down some vines, there are some vines reaching the ground from up here.” 

A few meters above him is one of those road like branches he passed by going up. He climbs up and soon finds himself standing at the start of the branch where it connects with the trunk. It curves left and right, filled with more growth of branches, and goes about a hundred meters south before the leaves swallow it. 

“There are vines hanging all around this branch from above, but it’s a straight fall to ground from here. I’ll see if i can find more vines behind those leaves. I’d rather fall on more branches than straight down. “

He jogs on the branch to cover the distance and he comes to a careful walk as the branch begins to narrow. As there is one more curve left before he reaches the cover of the leaves, he soon hears the birds chirping louder. He can even hear a few flapping wings. The sun is to his left, he keeps it in mind, he should have it behind him before he goes down a vine and keep that direction. 

“Hmmm I think the direction won’t be much of a problem at this point. If I ever reach the ground from here, I’ll be on the south side of this tree for sure. East would be to my left once I face this tree on the ground. Good, that settles it then.”

There is a rustling of leaves ahead of him. Something alights on the branch behind the leaves and Nikola hears a huge flapping of wings.

“Finally, I can see one of these birds I’ve been hearing all day!” 

Suddenly, he hears the familiar screech he hears in between the bird noises. It was coming from behind the leaves in front.

“Uh… what?”

There are tweets, chirps, songs, and caws all around him all day, and few screeches here and there. This is just bad luck.

He hears the flapping wings again, and listens to a caw. 

“Okay, I must have heard wrong.” 

Restarting his walk, Nikola approaches the leaves. He holds on to a branch and enters the foliage. A few distances in, after swapping away some leaves, shock came at him at the sight within.

A bird perches on the branch, in its beak is a smaller bird, it caws once more, feebler than the first. Blood dripping from its body, which leaves a dark red streak on the bigger bird’s beak. The predatory bird is bigger than Nikolai, he can climb on its back fly away from here if it is only possible. It looks like a giant eagle, with a long neck, a toucan beak without the colors, and the wings function like arms with claws in the middle of it. It appears to be sleeping, but it shouldn’t be, it’s only before sunset, might be it’s preparing to roost here for the night, and got itself a midnight snack. 

“I’ll be breakfast and lunch if I don’t get out of here now. Vines, need to find those vines now.” 

He crouches low on the branch and scans the view below. 

“I need a vine that goes down to the forest floor. Hmmm there’s only a few, that one seems to be the closest to me. Okay, follow the vine upward to its source…. “

His eyes trails upward from the forest floor. 

“Ack!” 

Just beside the monster, the vine goes past upward. It’s an understatement to keep calling it a bird, Nikola decided. 

“What now, maybe when it’s asleep I can just crawl past it and climb down. I’ve seen birds sleep and they don’t usually move around in the dark… Hmmm, unless it’s an owl? Crazy looking for an owl. Okay, I’ll sit this one out. I need to re-establish my bearing.” 

Nikola settles on the branch for a moment and thinks, facing away from the monster.

“There could be more monsters below when I get down, and I would need flexibility to move once I reach the ground. So, upon reaching the ground, I should put the tree to my right, then dash forward.”

He looks back at the monster behind him, the cawing bird has disappeared inside its mouth, but the monster hasn’t moved yet, not an inch. 

“Eeek. I should go back, I need to keep distance from this monster”. 

Nikola crawls away back to where he came from. 

“Live to fight another day.”


	5. Escape the Colossal Tree

“I think I read somewhere that it’s still easy to get lost in a forest even if you dash straight ahead. “

Lost in thought, Nikola walks the rest of the road wide branch back to the trunk. 

“The unequal strides can send someone going in circles. Hmmm I have a theory I want to try. What if I aim for a visible land mark far ahead, that way I’ll be sure of my direction until I reach it. I’ll most likely deviate a few degrees on the next visible landmark, but it’ll be a very wide curve if ever I end up going in circles. Hmm I’ll try that tomorrow once that monster is gone.” 

Deep hollows form on the surface of trunk from the root like formations wrapped around it.  
Root like formations surrounds the surface of the massive trunk, creating deep hollow gaps here and there. Ferns decorate some of these gaps, among other vegetations able to survive.

“Those seem good as shelter for tonight. Hope it doesn’t get too cold like last night. Man, I’m starving and my throat’s parched.”

Tired and knees wobbly, Nikola drops on the branch as soon as he nears the wall. He lies there with his cheek pressed flat. He stares into the tree tops glowing orange in the sunset. It reminds him of his sorrows, remembering only a day ago, he had been falling down a skyscraper. It was sunset too. He had lost all his friends, they’ve all been prepared to lose their lives in the endeavour, but it was still sad to part with them. It had been an abrupt parting. Just a day ago, he was prepared to die fully, and found peace at the thought. They had completed their mission, hopeful that what they did would make a difference, at the expense of their lives. But now, he finds himself trying his hardest to survive, driven by the lush life of this forest, which jolted him awake last night into a deep survival instinct. This forest is out to get him, but he will fight back, he had fought even when death was inevitable and certain death he got, but he came out miraculously unscathed, and now facing this forest full of unknown dangers. Yet compared to what he had been through, this was nothing. He will survive this, in whatever way he can. 

As sun sinks lower, turning into dusk, Nikola crawls into a hollow trunk, found there was a bend to hide from the wind, then curls himself to rest.

\---

Loud noises wake him. The trunk quakes and heavy poundings emanate from above the massive tree, the sound reverberating through the wood.

“What’s that noise?”

Alert, Nikola bolts upright, wide awake. The trembles continue and a heavy downpour can be heard outside. He edges out of the recess and sees bright moonlight shining in, clouded by the heavy rain. 

Something is odd with the rain. Where he is expecting splashes of water, there is none; the glistening wet wood floor… dry. And in place of the splatter of water are solid thuds of heavy objects from the sky.

“It’s wood…. “ Nikola realized. “It’s raining chips of wood!” 

Arms covering his head, he dashes out of the trunk and into the wide branch. He pelts through the rain of wood debris, varied sizes of chipped wood striking down at his arms and shoulders. At last he was out of range, and he traces the rain upward to its source. Blackness filled the void underneath the giant tree’s millions of leaves, shadowed from the moonlight. There was nothing to be seen, the woody rain continues to fall from within the darkness. 

“I’ve rested enough, it’s seems it’s only been short hours since after dusk. I’m not waiting for whatever’s chipping away at the tree up there.” Nikola said, turning around and began to run towards the end of the branch, away from the raining debris.

A full moon shines to his left, no wonder it was pitch back last night, Nikola thinks to himself. It would have been great if it was pitch black again, under the cover of darkness, he thinks he’ll be able to successfully crawl towards the vine beside the monster of a bird. But this is still great news, with the bright moonlight, he’ll have a lesser chance of getting lost as he travels through the forest tonight.

Thinking about it as he dash, he feels something off at the instant. He looks back and found no more chips of wood raining down on the branch. The silence was eerie and the tremors underneath his feet as he runs has died down. 

A strong wind whistles across the trees, and Nikola feels it push against him, putting him to a stop to brace himself. He catches hold of branch nearby and holds on tightly. 

The wind dies down, but he can still hear it hissing, his hand holding the branch is still firm, as he waits for another blow. He strains to listen for the rustle of leaves… But no wind came, and the hissing continues.

His heart skips a beat as the realization comes to him. “The hissing… snakes.” 

And from above the tree came the rustling of leaves, branches creaking, and the sounds of birds flying off in the air. Squawking and shrieking they went, flapping great wings in the dark. Once more wood debris came down, seconds before something heavy comes crashing with it, shaking the whole branch wide up and down, Nikola holding on for his life. 

His vision clears as the shaking dies down and he eyes the monster that appeared. Something else falls down after it, white and solid, it crashes on the branch, breaking into hundreds of pieces, the sound of it echoing into the forest. The sound of a breaking egg.

Nikola can’t believe what he’s seeing, this is too much to add to his current situation. The monster, a snake, huge and glistening in the moonlight. Its body curls around the wide branch, its body itself half the width of the branch. 

Petrified, Nikola watches it moves towards him, slow and silent, its tongue flicking in and out. It lowers itself down on the branch and uncoils its tail from behind. Something came out from its sides without warning, and Nikola wasn’t prepared for it. They were arms with elbows and hands ending in short and dark sharp claws. Claws that had been chipping away wood for the past hour.

It’s time to go… Nikola figures. He doesn’t mean to go away from the branch, but means to go to the afterlife. Nikola laughs in disbelief at his bad luck. His will to live gradually leaves him as the limbed snake, approaches.

“There’s no escaping this one… I should just jump down now and hope I don’t survive.” He looks down and sees nothing but blackness. His grip softens from the branch and he stares once more at the monster. 

He contemplates to jump, but is suddenly pulled off his thoughts, as a great number of flapping wings resounded the forest. It distracted the snake. The birds are back and the tree is filled with cries and screech all around. Huge birds swoop down from the darkness and surround the snake, their beaks lashing at it. Nikola notices it just now, under the moonlight, the birds have saw-like teeth lining inside their beaks. 

He makes a break for it, he dashes away from the monsters while they are still distracting each other. This is his only chance to get out of here. The fighting behind him has increased its intensity and the branch began to sway once more, slightly at first. With sure feet, and holding on to every branch for support as he passes them by, Nikola is almost near the vine.

Suddenly, the whole branch lurches, and throws Nikola off his feet. He falls backward and his quick wits saves him as he immediately turns around and grabs onto something. The branch sways even more and Nikola latches on to it like a hungry leech. He turns to look at the battle and gasped, nearly losing his grip from the surprise. The snake is heading his way!

Swift and agile, the birds charge and dodge the snake’s sharp swipes. Two more clawed limbs has appeared behind the snake, making it look more like a lizard now. Its tail whips in and out of the birds, clearing a space in the air with a single wave. Nikola notices the claws at the tip of the tail. Every once in a while, it would slash a bird and send it hurling down into the blackness. For a new-born monster, the snake defends and attacks like a veteran fighter, never letting the birds overpower him. The tail is too fast, no bird can bite it as it as it whips around.

But it has a weakness and some of the birds are aiming for it. Where the tail starts, the movement is slow. The other birds distracts the head while the others attacks its rear.

The bites at its rear end sends the snake running forward to the tip of the branch to evade. In a minute, the battle will be on top of Nikola. In running away from it, he’s now closer than he has ever been. 

“Get away from me!! Go fight somewhere else!” 

Nikola holds tightly, legs and arms wrapped around the branch. Any minute now, a bird might spot him and bite at him instead, but so far none has come at him yet. 

The branch sways up and down wildly, leaves and more branches flies and fall into the void as they are whipped by the snake’s tail. More birds fall from the hit, but more of them arrive as well to help, and the snake is now wounded here and there. 

Fighting a losing battle, the snake’s movements grows more intense and wild. The branch shakes like all its purpose is to throw Nikola off itself. And Nikola doesn’t see it stopping, sooner or later he’ll be too weak to grab hold he knows it. He’ll have to fall. 

As the branches around him trashed with the intense battle, some of them creak, bend and break. One such branch was Nikola’s. 

“Noooooooooo!” 

It sends him hurling down into the abyss, but as luck would have it, he hits a bird swooping low and the branch tangles with it in a split second. Nikola closed his eyes at the impact. He can feel the rushing wind and flapping of wings as the bird thrashes in the air on their way down. But the ground doesn’t come.

Shrieking and rolling in the air, the bird flies around trying to break Nikola’s grasp from its neck. Without him knowing, he has grabbed on to the bird! The trees and the giant tree is now below him and the bright moon above, the stars twinkling calmly in the sky, uncaring of his suffering. Nikola tears up a little as he holds tighter at the bird, it’s wild manoeuvring tries to shake him off, rolling, twisting, and soon goes into a high-speed dive. 

They crash into the leaves and branches, the bird, hoping to get rid of Nikola this way. The moment he lets go, he’s going to be dinner or a midnight snack. Branches hit him as they speed through, sending pain to his shoulders, head and back. 

Its speed dies down as it gets tangled in the branches, its claw grabs onto a branch, and it hangs itself upside down. Nikola quickly wraps his legs around the bird, but it isn’t a perfect wrap as it body is wide. Now hanging upside down and a strong foothold, the bird began to twist and turn like mad. Nikola’s legs loosen and it sends him hanging at the birds’s neck, ruffling the feather and strangling the bird in the process. Nikola doesn’t plan to let go, he’s taking this bird down with him. 

A weak shriek, a final breath and the bird detaches its grasp off the branch sending both of them falling through more branches. Nikola braces himself in the fall, hands still clutching the birds neck. He figures he’ll just use the body to soften the landing. But unfortunately, it gets caught in one of the branches and it is wrenched off his grasp. 

Body aching, the wind rushing to his face, leaves hitting him all over, he tries to catch a branch to hold on to, but they were all weak and broke.  
He breaks through the last group of leaves and branch and finds himself hurling down into open air, beneath him a short distance, the battle.

Birds circle around the snake, the snake whipping its claws and tail in a slower speed than before. It has grown tired and weakened from the flock of monsters attacking it. Nikola hurtles through the birds and suddenly realizes where he is headed.

He braces himself and lands flat on the back of the snake with a plump, its scaled body a cushion to his fall. There came a creak, and a sound of wood cracking, and before they know it, the branch lurches down as it breaks. Nikola and the snake falls along with it.

Birds follow suit in a rapid dive as they hurtle to the ground, the snake twists and turn and whips its tail to attack even as it falls. Some of the birds are hit, stunned or slashed open by its claws. Down they all went and the drop came to an abrupt stop with a loud thud. 

Nikola has been thrown off at the crash and as luck would have it, finds himself on a dead bird. 

“I’m alive!! Again! I’m alive!” he breathes out a whisper. “I have had it with falling, I promise I’ll never climb anything high ever again!” 

The battle isn’t over yet, as the remaining birds continue to bite at the snake, but it will be, soon. With a solid ground, and more space for movement, the snake uses its arms to break through the circle of birds and off into the darkness. The birds follow, and Nikola is left on his own amongst the dead.

“I’m on the ground… South side… Face the tree, left is east” Nikola recites. He is checking his bearings. “Left is east…. Left is east… “

Left is east. Nikola’s sweat turns cold and his stomach feels like bursting with gigantic butterflies. Tired and heart beating fast, he gets up and readies for a mad dash east.

Left is east. That is his direction to the village.  
That was where the monsters headed.


	6. Hunted

Nikola grabs his shoulder and winces in pain then rolls off the bird’s carcass where he fell.

He got thrown off the giant snake as they fell, luckily he landed on a dead bird, thus incurred only bruises. They were painful under his clothes, yet something in him feels stronger than the pain. His stomach churns, starving.

"I've been here twenty-four hours and I've not eaten a meal nor drank any water," he realizes.

Before setting out to run east, he can't help his mouth water at the abundance of potential food lying around him. Dead birds, they litter the forest floor underneath the massive tree. Raw food just lying everywhere. Some were torn open and blood spills on the ground as they bleed.

"Ugh, they are too big to carry, and I've no knife to cut any of them apart," 

Feeling regret, he has no choice but to leave them there untouched.

The full moon shines bright, illuminating the forest floor in wide patches of silver and the cries of the battling monsters echoing in the night. 

“Time to put my theory in practice. Just need to keep some distance from the fighting ahead of me. Let’s see, I need to aim for a distant pattern, the farthest pattern.”

He squints and spies a tree illuminated by the moonlight . Luckily, the trees around here aren’t to thickly close together. He judges the tree in the distance is around 300 meters away. 

“That’s good enough”.

Eyes on the illuminated tree, he begins running. The path is easy, littered with leaves and pine needles. He reaches the tree in no time, and stays there for a while, listening.

The screeches and flapping wings sounds farther and he can hear the faint cracks of branches breaking. The giant snake is still giving a lot of fight at the sound of it. He imagines its clawed tail whipping ferociously, cutting branches and trees into half in one swoop. He shudders at the thought.

“Next aim, hmmm this is better, that’s about 500 meters away.”

In the distance, a huge boulder stands white and bright under the moonlight. This is an easier target than the trees. He wastes no time and starts his trek. He walks briskly among the trees, hearing new nocturnal noises along the way. Crickets, owl hoots and scurries of tiny feet surrounds him as he moves on.

At the sound of a rustling bush nearby, he slows his approach, and stoops low. He listens intently, expecting to hear more. He has only noticed his heart thumping loud in his ear. From the direction of the bush where he heard the noise... silence. 

Nikola gives a sigh. He moves on and reaches the boulder safely. He crouches beside it and proceeds to walk around behind. 

“That was easy, if this continues I’ll be out of here in no time. Now for the next aim.”

As he reaches the other side, his jaw drops. In front of him, the land slopes downwards to around a hundred feet, and from where he stands, only the tree tops can be seen. Below, the trees grow close together, the bushes thicker and higher, and vines hang down from trees with more vines crawling up at it forming a curtains of vegetation. They block the possibility of looking farther ahead.

“Damn, this is bad. I need a new tactic.”

He sits on the ground and thinks. 

“At the moment, I’m not lost. I know where I want to go. I don’t know where I am, but I know I need to head east.”

He keeps that thought in mind, keeping him from falling into panic.

“The problem here is the limited view, I don’t want to run in circles. Should I try a zigzag course? I’ll aim as far as I can see, and traverse it with a few degrees to the left in the first run, then traverse the next point a few degrees to the right. This might lessen the chance of going in circles. Also, I can find some shelter and wait for the morning to come, I’ll be able to get better directions when in the morning.”

The moon as compass is out of his options. He doesn’t know how to navigate using the moon, he might just get lost if he assumes the moon is pointing east at this very moment.

Wolves howl from a distance, the first time he takes notice of it. He’s been hearing it for a while, but they were farther then, distant. It gives him a slight alarm hearing the wolves somehow closer. 

“Are they hunting me or are they just headed in this direction? Will it hunt me if they pick up my scent?” He shudders.

“It’s best to be cautious, I should assume everyone’s out to eat me. It’s time to leave.”

He decides on his plan to zigzag through the forest and proceeds down the slope. At the foot of the slope, he hears the wolves howl once more, it worries him.

He breaks into a run, and put all his concentration to keeping his bearings, creating a mental compass for east. This isn’t accurate but zigzagging will slow him down. Each time his path is met with an obstacle where he has to move diagonally, he keeps east in mind, so he can once more face it when the diagonal movement is done.

“I’m not lost, I shouldn’t deliberately lose track of east, it it happens I lose it, I’ll be forced to wait in the forest while avoiding the wolves.”

He keeps running. All around him, the vegetation grows thicker. There are rocks here and there, tall boulders, rock formations that look eerily familiar and out of place. Although the rocks are very curious, he keeps moving as he doesn’t have the luxury to investigate. At some point, he becomes aware that for the last hour of constantly running, the howls have been steadily growing closer!

Fear grips him as he figures his scent has been picked up.

“I’ll be hounded for the rest of the night! And that’s hoping I survive this! Shit!”

He speeds up his run, concentration at the maximum, “head east”. He got scratched, his legs muddied, fell down and scraped his knees under his pants, but he is determined to outpace the wolves and increase the distance. He’s not exactly sure how long he’s been running since, maybe an hour, maybe just a few minutes, he can’t say, but his muscles are tired, his breathing hard and his legs appears starting to cramp. Only adrenaline could have been keeping him up for the last few hours. 

At last, he hits a dead end in the form of a wide river. Its flow is heavy, and its narrow bank filled with pebbles is partly submerged in the water. It looks impossible to cross this river safely, not with his muscles ready to give up any second. 

“I’ll follow this river north and walk by the water, I might have a chance to lose the wolves.”

He can still afford to move a few ways north, the possible village he saw was slightly northeast of the giant tree.

“For now I need to rest. And finally I can drink water!” 

He has never felt such joy from drinking water before. It looks clear and clean under the moon shine, the pebbles underneath looks so clear.

After drinking cool water from the bank, he spies an aged tree with long dark branches patched with moss, overhanging above the flowing river.

“That looks like a good spot to rest. I can't outrun the wolves any further, after I’ve rested I’m sure they’ll be upon me by then.”

He climbs the tree and crawls to a spot with the rushing river below. The wolves continue to howl every now and then, it’s very close now. He figures this spot is the best choice. A sure escape into the water if all hell breaks loose, rather than imprisoning himself in some caved shelter.

He’s getting drowsy. He can’t fight the tiredness anymore. He feels safe and hidden up on this tree. His hunger has been calmed by the water for the time being. 

Howls and barks echo in the night, coming closer. 

His vision is already fusing with reality and dream, shadows dancing in the dark on the branches, bodiless voices quarreling from nearby and a pale woman crawling up the tree towards him.. He isn’t alarmed, this is normal when he tries to fight back sleep...

The visions disappear when he hears the barkings grow louder, the wolves are here. One final howl, long, loud and near. He holds his breath, he hears the padding of large feet approaching. Off in the darkness bound the largest wolves he had ever seen. 

Hunched on four feet, they were as high as those birds battling the snake. 

“What's up with the animals in these forest! Nothing's normal! And everything's a monster, where the hell am I? This is ridiculous!.” He screamed in his head.

He watches in silence as the wolves come into the river, a few distance from his tree. They stopped and smelled the air. They spread out and sniffed around.  
There are three of them out in the open, but Nikola is sure he sees shadows moving out of the moonlight behind the trees. There are more hidden. 

Suddenly, his branch moves as something heavy adds on its weight. He is too busy with the three wolves underneath, he doesn’t notice one of the wolves has found him!

Nikola comes face to face with a huge snarling wolf at the start of the branch he’s resting on. It’s teeth glowed white in the dim, saliva dripping from its mouth. Close up, its dark fur looks like black scale armor. It inches forward on the branch, its back hunches low, ready to for an attack.

It is now or never, he turns around to jump, but in his split second of hesitation, the wolf takes its move. It leaps at him aiming to take him down into the water in its jaws. But he reacts quickly and slips off the branch, kicking the branch to speed up his fall. The wolf tangles in the branch for just a second, until the whole branch breaks off from the weight. They all fell into the river, branch, wolf and Nikola.

He struggles in the water, trying to swim away to the other bank. He made a few seconds head start by falling first, and the wolf is behind the leafy branch flowing down with them, it won’t be able to catch him in the water just yet. He sees the other wolves following from the banks, snarling and barking.

A few seconds later, Nikola hears a noise coming closer. It‘s faint at first, but soon it becomes a roar in the dead of night. It’s a waterfall!

He realizes it too late, and as he looks back towards the wolf at the branch, he finds it climbing up safely at the river bank. 

“Damn!”

He looks at the branch, and swims away from it to the side.

“I don’t want that thing to fall on top of me!”

A second later he is falling, then deep underwater a few seconds more. He forgot to scream, he was too busy running away from the branch. 

He is glad to have survived. Upon reaching surface, he swims across to the side, then looks up above the waterfall as he rests.

He sees the wolves watching him from above, looking down on him before they disappear shortly from view. In a moment he hears the wolves barking and snarling, they must have found another prey and it is fighting ferociously. As he climbs up off into solid ground, he hears whimpers and wolves in pain.

“Something’s attacking them.” he figures.

As he looks up once more, he sees the wolves suddenly being pushed back into the edge of the waterfall, then in one big sweep, all wolves fall down into the water, some hit rocks as they fall, some hit solid ground at the bottom, and some survive, falling into the water.

Nikola can only watch in terror at the sight.

Horror engulfs him fully, as he watch the giant snake comes crashing into the water right after.


	7. Survival

Large amounts of spray spew up into the air as the giant snake crashes into the plunge pool like an explosion of a heavy dynamite. The resulting huge wave carries the injured wolves back into the middle of pool, as they try to swim away from the waters. Only these wolves can be seen, while the others are nowhere to be found.

Petrified and in a state of terror, Nikola saw them falling a few seconds back. Some of the wolves fell to the ground and was not seen rising after that. The other wolves fell in the river and tried to swim to the nearest bank as soon as possible, the bank opposite Nikola’s. While some of the wolves were unlucky, either they were dead before they hit the water, or their injuries were severe, they could not swim and ended up drowning.

Nikola sees a few of them floating lifeless in the water. 

A violent explosion breaks out anew from beneath the pool, sending a huge pillar of water high up into the air, the giant snake with its wide gaping mouth right in the middle. The giant snake has launched an injured wolf to the air and promptly snatches it with its mouth a split second later. Startled by the horrific scene, Nikola gains the sense to finally run away.

His terror has left him speechless, as he scurries away wide-eyed into the darkness of the forest ahead of him. The sound of more violent splashes of water follow him while he runs. And as the sounds grow fainter, Nikola slowly regains his senses but his mind is still wrought with fear. 

“I thought I was going to die!” 

He grabs and pulls his hair while running, then slaps his face with both palms hoping to wake up from this nightmare. But this is real, the pain stinging on his face, he recovers his resolve to live and furrows his brows in sharp concentration.

“I think I’m running roughly east, this can be northeast or southeast, can’t be sure. Though I’m sure I swam towards the east side bank after I fell down the waterfall. It can’t be helped, my priority now is to get as far away as possible from the river.”

His body feels heavy as he hastens through the dark forest. His shoes go squish and squash with every step, his clothes soggy and wet, spraying droplets while running. The cool breeze isn’t helping either, sending him icy chills from his wet clothes.

“If this goes on I’m going to be high in fever by tomorrow. I must keep running until at least I’m dry and hot enough.”

The last few minutes have been traumatic, and his decision to continuously run until dry is partly due to his fear the giant snake will catch up. His experience with being attacked didn’t scare him too much the first time. It gave him a shock, but as soon as the birds came to the rescue, not that they were really rescuing him, he was relieved. But this time he was the sole target and it felt largely different to be alone against hardened predators. It was really frightening.

Past fallen logs, up hills riddled with trees and down rocky slopes, he has kept running. He passes by a stream and takes note of it, he’ll try to come back in the morning for some cold water to drink. But for now, he must keep on running. 

At long last, he slows down. Breathing hard, his lungs feeling like they’re about to burst out of his chest. He bends and supports his hands on his knees, then straightens up to breath some more. 

“HAH!” He belts out air off his lungs. 

He had ran until he can run no more. The muscles on his legs feels hot and wobbly, cold sweat drips off his face and his head feels light and sleepy. His clothes are still damp, not as wet as before, but his shoes are too wet still that he wants to take them off as soon as possible. It’s a good running shoes, his girlfriend Yura had given it to him in the past. They had found it in an abandoned mall a few months after the end of the world.

Nikola has no time yet to think about the past as much as he likes. There will be more time, a lot of time to think about all of it once he survives this forest. For the meantime, all his energy and thoughts are gathered into one purpose, survive and get to the town at the edge of the forest.

His breathing stabilizes and his hearing is cleared from his heavy breathing, giving him the chance to appreciate his surroundings. No howls of wolves to be heard, no barkings in the distance, no sounds of feet padding through the leaves. Permeating the air, in this part of the forest, are the chirps of the crickets, numerous in the thick of the woods. An occasional sound of a buzzing fly buzzes around his ear and soft owl hoots reach him from above.

For all the years he had lived in the city, he had never seen a firefly. And now in front of him three fireflies dance in swirls above a plant. They move away , and Nikola transfixed at their sight, follows them into a clearing, grass bathing under the moonlight. A few seconds later, a few more fireflies join them, he could not have been happier at the sight of them. They fly up in the air, leaving him on the ground, and as he follow them with his gaze, he is struck with awe at the beautiful scene he notices just now.

A while ago he thought they were stars, he had not looked at them directly, but now he looks at it in amazement. A sea of fireflies floats above a wide expanse of trees around the clearing, thousands and thousands green dots of lights clinging on the leaves, waving along with the breeze. They move like waves in the middle of an ocean, up and down forming wide waving arcs looking like green moving stars. It feels surreal, and Nikola sheds a tear at his joy. He sits on the grass and stares at the sea of fireflies for a few minutes more. He has never felt this calm since coming into this forest. 

As he sits there in his extended wonder, he soon notices something partly illuminated by the fireflies beyond the the trees. It looks like a big boulder, strangely shaped. The longer he looks at it, the stone formation looks oddly familiar. Its like a structure of some kind.

Nikola starts up to investigate. Walking halfway through the clearing he soon have less doubt about the thing. It is a structure, old and in ruins, partly looking eroded yet still it stands. A tree has grown from under it, breaking the floor and growing through the open space at the second floor half hidden by the leaves. 

It’s a two-story house, the staircase made of cement intact. As he enters the broken wall, he finds the door on the other side adjacent to his entrance. The other door must have been where the the tree stands now. The floor is littered with leaves, vegetations and roots crawling from under the floor, cracking it in most places.

Nikola heads up to the second floor, there’s only half a roof and half of the space is occupied by the tree’s branches and leaves. More leaves are strewn across the floor here and only a few small plants growing in the accumulated peat in the corners of the room. He decides he’ll stay here for the time being.

He takes off his shoes quickly and crawls into the floor covered by the leaves, where he proceeds to take off his clothes to dry them on the branches, acting also as his curtains. He plucks the wide leaves from the branches and forms a bed of leaves. He even has enough to cover himself just a bit. 

His eyes grow heavy as he lies there by the wall, in the cover of the tree. In a few seconds, he drowses off to sleep.

\---

Nikola awakens with the cheery chirps of birds on the branches just above him. Half awake, he stretches his arms wide and feels the clothes hanging beside him. They feel dry and he promptly pulls them of the branch, revealing the bright warm sunlight behind them. The warmth washes over his face and his sleepy eyes hurt in the sudden brightness. 

He gets up after wearing the dry clothes, and went to the first floor barefoot. His shoes still wet, are left to dry in a sunny corner. 

The ground feels good and warm under his feet as he trudges on the structure’s broken floor. 

“First things first, I need something to drink. There should be the small stream to the west, I remember passing it by last night”.

Walking back from where he came from last night, the trip towards the stream looks different from what he remembers. He passes by the clearing, as beautiful as it was in the evening. Beyond the clearing, as he walks, he finds more structures partly hidden behind the trees. There are single floor structures as well as more two-story structures same as where he slept. He finds a high rusted metal pole that might have been a lamp before, and a highly rusted metal heap that could have been a car. Grass and flowers grows around the heap, making it look prettier than it should. In the undergrowth, broken by roots, eroded by the time, there are traces of what used to be pavements going west and east. This could have been a whole town before it’s been swallowed up by the forest. 

“How long have they been here? All of these?”

He has no ready answer, and his more pressing issue concerning water is higher in his priority list at the moment. He moves past all the structures, no time to investigate further.

A few minutes pass, and he soon hears the stream. He slows down his walk and crouches low behind a bush to observe his surroundings. Usually, different sorts of animals also go the streams to drink, there is more chance to meet a predator here than anywhere else, he thinks. Slowly, he moves near the stream, no sign of any animals yet. Not wanting to delay his thirst any longer, he grabs a large leaf and rolls it into a cup, then proceeds towards the stream to drink. The leaf helps him to get as much water as he wants quicker. His stomach full of water, he retreats back into his camp.

“I should stay here for the time being, and prep up. I’ve got a water source and a shelter, I can exploring the town and look for food for the rest of the day.”

Thus he explored around until noon, looking for any source of food. He’s afraid of berries, not sure if he should risk it, so he settles with breaking down pine cones. He finds the seeds okay and proceeds to gather as much pine cones as he can. He finds some sharp rocks from one of the ruined structures and proceeds to sharpen them further once he returns to his camp. At his camp he has gathered a lot of wood and decides then to try his hand with making fire. He knows about the drill technique with sticks, where you drill a stick with your bare hands until it produces heat, but he feels tired already at the thought of it. For creating fire, he improvises and cuts a medium size stick in the middle with his sharp rock to expose its white insides. He scratches some of the sticks to create wood fibers for his fire, then creates another piece of wood with a thin blunt end. Instead of drilling, he heats up the sticks in a push and pull motion with the narrow blunt ended stick, at the middle if the medium size stick as he pins it on the ground. He practices this until the middle of the afternoon, finally ends in a number of successes by then. 

Lastly, he creates himself a wooden spear, with a fire hardened tip. 

The rest of the night passes on uneventfully. By the next day, Nikola is armed and ready, after getting a drink from the stream he fills up his water canteen he made before sleeping. He was able to find a trunk yesterday, with a soft core and hollowed it out, then created a cork too to cover it. Then he’s off to head east. 

The days grew easy, he found more sources of food from plants he recognized, and there were less and less predators around that were large enough to eat him. He saw new animals along the way, peaceful ones like deers with terrifying large horns on their heads, deers with muscular bodies like an bison. He had seen enough monsters around to find deers like those unusual in his forest. He even met someone in the forest, a guy named Leon who pointed him the way out towards a village and also shared with him some food to eat.

He has never killed an animal along the way, except once when he got attacked by a wild boar. It wasn’t much of a fight as he had a spear, and the boar charged at him, impaling itself in the attack when he drew the spear at the right timing. His firsts kill, a large boar, and thanks to it, he got food for the next few days. 

Traveling alone for days was sure lonely, and Nikola found it best to talk less and less to himself. He thought less and less as well and focused only on a few things: food, water, east. Thinking too much alone for days might unstable his mind he thought. So he focused only on his purpose, and that all will be well once he’s out of the forest.

At this point, the forest begins to become more peaceful, and Nikola is nearing his limits of traveling alone. It had started with a slight temperature, and by mid-morning he had a fever. Past noon, his body has greatly weakened, and his temperature became a raging fever.

With every step he’s making, his vision blurs and darkens even more, his breathing, slow, his heartbeat, pounding. 

“Is this it? I thought I was doing well. I can still do this. I can’t give up now... I’ve been traveling for days! I’ve made it through a lot of things! But I’m just going down with a fever??”

He forces himself to walk further, but his energy is no more. He vision turns black, and he collapses. 

A few seconds later, before his consciousness leaves him, an arrow lodges firmly on his butt.

“Aaaaargh! That hurts!!”


	8. The Dark Poison

A loud cry of pain fills the air, coming from behind the bushes where Sky’s swift arrow disappeared. His innocent heart races at the thought of having injured someone by accident, and he wavers at what to do. 

“Oh shoot! I’ve hit a person! Am I going to jail!? I don’t want to be like neighbour Ben!“

He wants to run away and hide, afraid of the amount of scolding waiting for him if his parents find out. At the same time, he knows he should aid the person in pain right now, no one else is nearby to help, and it was his fault anyway that the arrow struck someone. For a few seconds, Sky hesitates but soon strengthens his resolve and dashes forward, dropping his bow behind.

Breaking through the leaves, he finds a guy in his teens sprawled, ragged, and bleeding from the arrow shot on his butt cheek. There is a wooden spear grasped in his arm, and a lot of seeds spilled on the ground. Sky panics at the sight.

“Oh no! Is he dead!? Should I bury him here!?.” 

Frantic and afraid to go near the body, he circles it jumping up and down, still not knowing what to do. He stops midway and pokes the body on the arm with a stick, it budges not still. 

“Waaah! I don’t have a shovel!”

Finally, the guy stirs and Sky is elated with joy. 

“Help me...” 

Sky doesn’t understand what the guy has said but it’s enough for him to move into action. He drops to the ground beside him as the guy is trying to stand on all fours, his whole body wobbling, greatly weakened. 

“I’ll help you stand up, mister! Take my shoulder.”

He goes under the guy’s arm and pushes himself to stand with the guy beside him. 

“Man, you’re burning up! There’s a cabin nearby, hold tight. I’ll take you there.”

He feels the guy’s fiery fever, his sweat trickling down all over his body. They leave the wooden spear and the seeds scattered on the forest floor, and limp their way slowly towards the cabin.

Sky is shorter than the guy, and only comes up to they guy’s armpit in height, just enough to support him a little hunched. 

They reach the cabin in a few minutes and Sky strains to see where the old man is. Old man Gamgee is still sleeping on the porch, a hat covering his face. 

“Mister Gamgee! Please help us! I found a guy in the woods burning up with a fever! Mister Gamgee!”

Old man Gamgee appears to wake up and removes his hat from his face. He looks at their direction then starts with a jump at the sight of them. 

“Hurry in!”

The old man shuffles to meet them on the porch. Old and looking frail, his short balding hair are white and gray.

“Come on in, take him inside. Is he hurt too?”

The old man opens up the screen door into the cabin, and Sky has just enough to glimpse the look of surprise on the old man’s face when he saw the arrow up the guy’s behind.

“Well, he’ll be fine with just that, that won’t kill him.”

Shuffling ahead, the old man clears the stuff on one of the dining table.

“Place him here, boy.”

With a great heave, Sky assists the guy towards the table, face down. He looks barely conscious. 

“He has a high fever.” Sky tells the old man.

“Let me see.”

Upon shuffling closer, he touches the guy on the forehead.

“Woah, that’s a high fever. Go fetch a pail of water and heat it up. I’ll take care of the arrow. Don’t burn yourself, boy.”

“Yes sir!” 

Sky turns to leave outside as the old man is inspecting the arrow lodged on the guy’s behind.

There’s a stream nearby, and Sky heads over to it after picking up a pail by the porch. He notices a horse and a cart beside the cabin, hidden from the path where he passed that morning. So he is surprised to see the horse grazing inside it’s pen. 

Pail full of water, he wobbles up the porch and goes inside. He has only noticed the interior, a couple of dining tables, bunk chairs and a kitchen counter on one side of the wall, with a door behind it leading to the kitchens. A wooden staircase leads to the second floor on the wall opposite the kitchen.

Old man Gamgee has finished closing up the wound and is inspecting the makeshift arrow in his hand. 

“I was surprised it came loose too easily,” the old man says, and looks at Sky.

He puts the pail of water down and scratches the back of his head in apology, while smiling sheepishly.

“Not to worry, boy. He was feverish even before you found him, your arrow has caused him none the slightest. Now go heat that water up, and fetch a towel in the cabinets upstairs. This guy just needs rest.” 

Sky is glad, and later on they take the guy up in one of the bedrooms to rest.

\---

Up on a high tree’s branch, Leon sits resting. There are only a few birds of prey in the area, thus he finds high branches safer than resting on the ground. In front of him, far out to the west stands a giant tree. That was the direction where the boy came from, the one he met last night, a ragged boy of sixteen, weak, and tired looking. The boy clearly looked lost and was too happy to see another soul out in the forest. Leon did not ask him a lot of questions.

“I thought I’d never see anyone out here in the forest!,” the boy exclaimed.

He carried a wooden spear with him, fire-hardened but clean and unused for killing. A corked wooden container hangs from his shoulder in a sling, must have been where he puts his water. 

“It’s a big forest, and rarely anyone comes here. You are quite lucky.” 

He had a big fire going then, it was dinner time and he was roasting some kill. The boy must have been drawn by the fire. The boy did not ask a lot of questions either, only a few.

“Do you know the way out this forest?” the boy asked, still standing, a short distance from the fire. 

“If you head further east from here, you’ll see a cabin. When you see a stream, follow it downstream and it will lead you there, you wont miss it. 

I’m about to have my dinner, why not rest here for the night?”

He points, palm open towards the fire. 

“You are too kind, sir. I am grateful. May I know your name? My name is Nikola.”

At this, the boy picks a spot around the fire with a smile on his face. 

“Call me Leon. Help yourself with the food in the fire, I have a lot.” he said to the boy. Leon pulls out more meat from beside him to cook in the fire. 

Nikola said his thanks and they ate in silence. Only the cracklings of the fire steadily spoke its unintelligible words to the constant noise of crickets and occasional replies of hoots from owls. 

When both were done eating, Leon packed up and gestured to Nikola to join him.

“I will retire up in the trees, I find it safer to sleep there. Would you care to join?”

“Thank you, sir Leon. I would prefer to stay here in the ground and tend to the fire. I’m afraid of heights,” the boy said. 

“Suit yourself. Give me a shout if any trouble comes, I’ll come down to help in seconds. I sleep light.”

“Thank you so much. I will leave when I’m rested. I may not be here in the morning.”

They said goodnight and Leon went to find a good spot in the branches of a tree. 

This morning, the boy is gone. 

He put poison in the boy’s food last night.

He expected he’d drop dead at any moment during dinner, but the boy never did. He’s not one of the rebels he’s been scouting for.

The poison was a powerful spell, one only he is able to make. It kills anyone with a strong dark energy inside their body. The stronger the dark energy, the faster the poison kills. The boy lived, he might not have enough dark energy inside of him, or none at all. If he has little, the poison will act slow and little, just a slight temperature and dizziness but he’ll survive. 

He created this poison for the king, Hastur, to exact his revenge against the most powerful dark energy holder himself. A single strike is enough for a definite win. But as he is now, he is weak and he’d be killed a million times before he can even draw his sword. For now, he must be patient and become stronger. He must work his ass off for the king in the meantime.

A merry sound of conversation distracts him from his thoughts. Down below, two men approach his tree from a distance. They are headed in the direction of the village he pointed the boy towards. They are both armed, one with a sword around his waist, the other a long bow. These, no mistaking it, are rebels. Leons smiles a wide smile grateful for what the morning brings.

“You should have seen me take down one of those dogs the other night! It was amazing!” 

“Nah, I was busy taking down four and it was horrible. How long are we going to stay in this forest. The dark keeps getting stronger by the day and we’re not getting younger out here.”

The voices draw nearer. 

“The rebels in the Republic of Zhah are doing great, they’ve been winning every skirmish they take for the last year and we sit here rotting on our asses, getting fatter and dealing with forest pests,” the man with the longbow said.

“We will move soon, we do not yet have the strength that Rosendal have in his band in Zhah. They will have to slow down their movements if we’re not able to increase our strength in the coming days.”

“I hear he has found an ace, the reason they win every battle.”

“But they only have one, and they will only win in one if they are attacked in multiple fronts.”

“We must find our ace in this country too, the soonest. We wait for the messengers from Zhah to tell us how they found th——- shhh.”

The voices suddenly die down and the both men become alert.

“Someone’s here. SHOW YOURSELF!”  
the man with the sword shouts. 

“I’ve been found.” Leon says to himself.

He has no way of winning against these men, these are hard men from the mid-lands of Hasturian kingdom, powerful and skilled. Losing will be inevitable, but the experience will be worth it. He will come out stronger the longer they fight. A little advantages is on his side; it’s the first time they’ll be fighting someone like him. They’re in for a surprise.

He jumps down from the top of the tree and softly lands in front of the men. 

“Gentlemen, I’ve heard enough. Shall we dance?” 

Everyone draws their weapons, and in a split second an arrow flies past Leon’s head. It isn’t a miss, Leon is just lucky to have dodged it. As he darts in a sidestep, he returns fire with his bow, his aim——at the swordsman, his target——the archer at the back. 

Rushing forward , the swordsman gives a slight surprise as he sees the arrow fly at him, but he moves his sword quick enough to deflect. To the swordsman’s surprise, the arrow curves around him! It flies past and hits the archer in the arm. Leon takes no delay to draw his sword and attacks the swordsman who had deflected too early. A draw-slash from the lower left, targeting the swordsman’s elbow, the swordsman sees it and makes a swift twist sideways to evade. Leon’s attack misses and as the swordsman sidesteps away, he see’s the archer behind, uninjured. An arrow hits Leon squarely in the forehead, and a swift slash from the turning swordsman opens up his neck in a spray of blood. 

It was over in less than a minute.

Defeat and death, it irks him too much to feel these things. These rebels’s teamwork is impeccable, they had not underestimated their opponent the slightest. They don’t play around, any enemy from the mid-lands of Hasturia are not to be taken lightly, they know. 

Leon’s lifeless body drops in a heap.

“We should move fast from here. We don’t know how many they’ve sent to come for us.” the swordsman said. 

“Aye, well be in deep trouble if the enemy gets wind of our location.”

Both men turns to move with no second glances on Leon. 

From behind them, Leon slowly stands up massaging his neck, the arrow drops by itself from his forehead as if pushed out by his brain.

“Gentlemen, I believe we’re not yet finished. Shall we try again?”


End file.
